“Oh I was for a few days. A nasty concussion and some knocks and bangs but they soon threw me out.”

“The newspaper said you were seriously ill. I thought you might die.”

“Yes, well sorry but here I am large as life and twice as ugly so now you need to just do as I say.”

“But, I don’t understand you.”

“Oh yes, I think you understand me very well indeed. You thought you could hide away didn’t you? But you’re an amateur. I’m one of the best and if we don’t settle this soon you’ll rue the day you decided to try and fool me.” He leaned and gripped her face in his big fingers squeezing till she felt warm blood in her mouth from where teeth punctured the inside of her cheeks.

“Now, okay, you made a good run for it – well done but it’s over. I need my stuff back and I need it now. There are people waiting for the delivery and believe me they are not people you want to meet. Now it’s up to you; easy or hard.” With a rough gesture he flung her head away from him and stretched again to his full height towering over where she curled whimpering in the dark.

“I haven’t got anything! Truly I haven’t!”

“You went through my pockets. I know you did.”

“Well I did, yes. I needed your phone, to call for help. I didn’t have mine.”

“Yes, but my other pockets; you went through my other pockets and you lifted what you found there didn’t you? I bet you thought it was Christmas. Oh you thought, I can have a little trip to Cornwall, and then what? Oh yes, France! You thought you’d just pop across the channel. Well, I don’t think so Pauline. I don’t think so at all.”

“Well, yes. I’m going to France, I am. But it was all planned already, before I left home. I was leaving home.”

“Oh right, you were leaving home and going to France and just on the way having a stroll through The Dales and a trip to Cornwall.”

“No, no, it isn’t like that… well yes, I suppose it is, but...” She drew in a shuddering breath. “I was leaving my husband and I found you. I tried to help you. I didn’t take anything.”

“Right let’s just give him a call.”

“What?”

“Your husband. Let’s you and me give him a little call, see if he’s missed you. Do you think he has, this mystery husband? Do you think he’s missed his Pauline?”

“No, no you can’t you mustn’t! He can’t know where I am! He’ll come and find me! Oh please don’t do this.”

“Give me the bag you took from my pocket and I’ll leave you. I have to tell you though I am feeling a bit impatient now. You’re pushing me and you don’t want to do that.”

“I haven’t got anything. I didn’t take anything.”

“Oh dear. I see you don’t really understand what you’ve got yourself into here. Those diamonds didn’t belong to me. That memory stick is important to my clients. They don’t want it falling into the wrong hands and you – well I’m afraid you are the wrong hands.”

“Diamonds? memory stick? I haven’t got any diamonds.”

“Oh come on now, that won’t wash. This is not going to end well for you if you insist on playing the innocent.”

Then with an alarming burst of speed he leaned down and grabbed Pauline and hoisted her to her feet. He pulled both arms up behind her back and she screamed as hot flashes of pain seared her muscles.

“Don’t! please! please don’t...”

“You can stop this right now but I’m warning you I am not a patient man.” With the words of threat ringing in her ears the darkness came and took her as she sagged forward in his grasp.

Chapter 19

Someone was crying. As she fought her way to the surface Pauline clamped down on the pitiful sobs.

Panic overwhelmed her, she couldn’t move, couldn’t see and she hurt, badly, everywhere. As reality dragged her back from the dark, each and every pain became more acute.

Inside her mouth was raw, her arms screamed, her legs were a deep ache. Her thumbs were searing ice. Her stomach roiled and acid burned in her throat. She retched but managed to hold back the nausea. A hard edged leather strap gagged her mouth and made swallowing almost impossible. Drool slipped sickeningly across her cheek. Every movement was torment. She had suffered pain before, often, but this was on a different level to that which she had become accustomed to at the hands of her husband.

It puzzled her that she was still in the little cottage. On the floor in the living room, in the dark. Her hands were awkward lumps beneath her and it was impossible to separate them. Her thumbs screamed their objection when she tried.

She tried to swivel her head around to see him, to find where he was but even this small movement caused such agony that she soon gave up. She couldn’t sense his presence in the room. Hope bloomed; maybe he had gone? He had immobilised her in the most cruel way. Though she wasn’t actually fastened down something was around her thumbs and her big toes were tied together with a stiff narrow band cutting off the circulation and preventing any attempt to stand. Her legs were pulled into an unnatural bow, her ankles twisted. Every movement shot lightning bolts through her entire body. The music still played, the gentle sound of jazz, smooth and liquid, mocked this nightmare she had woken to.

She felt the bump through the old building. He was still here then, upstairs perhaps or in the kitchen. Footsteps across the ceiling answered the question. He was thumping and banging in the bedroom. Searching for things she didn’t have.

Her frame shook and juddered though she tried to ease the effect of the shivering on the damaged parts of her body. Her world was a flood of pain and despair swept in to overwhelm her. She didn’t think she wanted to live now. She wanted to be away from this, to fall back into the recent darkness and float away. Nobody could stand this, yet she shivered and breathed and cried salt tears which dribbled across her face and stung her ruined lips and the peace refused to take her back.

The thud of feet on the stairs told her he was coming back. She closed her eyes and tried to still the shivering. It was impossible, her body was crying out for ease and could find it nowhere.

He nudged her with the toe of his boot. “You awake now?” She screwed her eyes tight. “Aha, I see you are. Well now, we have a problem don’t we?” He crouched beside her and with the ball of his thumb prised open one eyelid. “Come on now, wakey wakey. You need to talk to me Pauline.

“Are you going to be sensible now and tell me where you’ve hidden them? Oh I do hope you haven’t sold them. That would be a very bad situation indeed. He grabbed her face and forced her to look at him. “You haven’t sold my pretty diamonds have you?”

She shook her head.

“Good, well that’s good. So all you need to do now is tell me where you’ve put them and where you have my memory stick and then we can all be on our way.”

She shook her head again, trying to make him believe her innocence, but he scowled at her and squeezed tightly with his fingers. She gasped with the fresh pain. “Oh now come on. You have to see this is really not going to work.” She shook her head desperately from side to side. He had to understand she couldn’t give him what she hadn’t got.

“Oh dear.” He straightened and then bent from the waist and in a moment of exquisite agony she was dragged to her feet and pulled to the sofa where he threw her into a slouch and then knelt before her.

“You will tell me. I can’t understand why you don’t see that. You have taken what was mine and I want it back. It’s simple and now you have made me very angry.” He snorted, great shoulders shrugging with the expiration of air.

An incongruous blackbird threw a song to the new morning. As the answering bird call tinkled in the garden he walked through to the hallway and came back with her coat and bag.